Patronage and Ransoms

Last time I touched briefly upon the idea of patrons, people who make and effort and spend their money to allow artists to create art. Now I've recently encountered a similar idea which I feel can be expanded upon. Instead of a single, economically powerful, patron helping multiple artists create music, movies, series, art or other forms of culture the basis for a working cultural future is that of patronage in numbers.

Before the modern revolution of the digital media which has returned culture to the people, most people were used to paying for the privilege of experiencing culture no matter the form. My suggestion is that instead of paying after an artist has created something, those of us who want said artist to continue take it upon ourselves to be patrons. Thus an artist can present a number of ideas for art he wants to create and a call for patrons - these patrons pay a small sum of money for the privilege of influencing what art is to be created next as well as an insight into the creation process. Thus, they would be paying before the artist has created something.

How do we go about this 'marvelous' solution then? First there needs to be a critical number of patrons before an artist can start his real work, even though there might be rough ideas outlined, basic tunes already written and so forth. This critical number really depends on what people are ready to pay, which means there needs to be a good amount of incentive for people to become patrons. Beyond the basic reason that someone might like what an artist does, the following could be good and general ideas for most artists to attract patrons; being able to influence the artist, have an ongoing overview of the creation process and constant updates, exclusivity for a period (if a digital piece of art for example), signed copies.

So, what is the benefit of this for the consumer and the artist? Let us begin the with consumer; they get to influence the artist in what he creates (such as helping decide which songs will be included in the mini-album) as well as having an indepth overview of how the piece of art develops. The artist could post photos of a painting or blog about a song, always staying open for a discussion between himself and his patrons so that the patrons can learn just a little more about a particular reasoning. Once the art is done, in most cases (digital art) the patrons will receive a personal, preferably signed and numbered copy of the work of art which they will retain exclusivity off for a set period of time (from 6 months to 2 years is what I would suggest). After this time of exclusivity when the material cannot be shared, the material can either be released into the public domain utilizing a Creative Commons license.

Lately I've come upon another model, called the "Ransom Model" wherein a work is created and held at "ransom". If the ransom (usually inbetween 500-750 dollars) is paid by people making donations of their own free will, the material is released to the public (often under a free license like Creative Commons) for everyone to use. The ransom model is a more open-minded variant of the patronage variant and it also removes the "problem" of piracy within PDF publishing. Once the ransom is met, the product becomes open content available to everyone, which means piracy no longer exists.